--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Widtsoe, John A. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 4 number: 4 published: 1901-02 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'John A. Widtsoe, "The Folly of Astrology," *Improvement Era* 4, no. 4 (February 1901): 289–295.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0404unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0404unse start_page: 289 end_page: 295 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1901-02) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0404unse publication_year: 1901 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1901, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Folly of Astrology THE FINDING OF OLGA. 287 soon subsided, and hearty-good-will greetings were exchanged between the militia boys and the small company of emigrants. The two young men went back for their horses, and soon reached the camp. The emigrants reported that the army was yet a short distance back, and that they had not dared to make a fire for fear of drawing attention. The Utah boys camped with them that night. From the train captain, Horace learned that there were a number of Danish Saints with them. He would show him their wagon. Now then, he would surely see her. His heart beat fully as hard as when he was spying out the camp of the enemy. He asked Sid to go with him. They went up to the wagon, and the captain in a jolly voice shouted, "Hello there, good folks. Hero's two young men that want to see you, very likely it's Olga they're after, you young scamps." This last to Horace and Sidney, as the good-natured captain walked away. A woman came from the wagon. "Good evening," said Horace. "Good efening." "You come from Denmark?" *'Jeg forstaar dem ikke." "What did she say?" asked Horace of Sidney. "She's talkin' Danish, of course. Don't you understand?" "Of course not." Horace found quite a difference between understanding spoken Danish, and reading, with the help of his mother, the letters he had received from Olga, in that language. "And how are you going to make love to a Danish girl, if ye can't speak Danish?" and Sidney laughed heartily. Two blue eyes now peeped from between the wagon-cover, and grasped the situation. She quickly withdrew, and there were sounds as of the opening and closing of boxes. "Olga, Olga," called the woman, at which there was a reply in the same unknown tongue. The two looked at each other and laughed, though they tried hard not to when they saw that it embarrassed the woman. "Here comes Larsen," exclaimed Sid. He can interpret for ye." " 288 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Larsen came up in a hurry. "Where's Sergeant Lusk?" he asked. "Here," replied Sid, "and he wants ye to help him understand Danish." "Haven't time now," replied Larsen, as he walked up to Horace and said, "You are wanted at once at the captain's." "In a minute," replied Horace, "won't you explain to this lady that I would like to see a girl by the name of Olga — "Look here, brother, the captain's in a hurry. Better move now, and attend to this matter afterwards." Horace turned abruptly and left. The woman now talked to Larsen, who answered her in her own tongue, and while this conversation was going on, a sort of dare-devil proposition entered Sid's mind. He was always on the look-out for jokes, practical or non practical, and this new idea had no sooner entered his head than he proceeded to carry it out without thought of consequences. Just then a girl stepped from the wagon. There was a change in the dress, and the hair had been gathered into a coil, but it was the girl of the brookside" adventure, and a sweet-looking girl she was, too, especially in the eyes of Sidney Jones. In that weak moment, he was glad that Horace Lusk was out of the way, and it did not occur to him that he was taking advantage of a comrade who had been called away on duty. Sidney met the girl, and took the hand she held out to him. A stream of yellow light came from the candle within the wagon; and by its assistance, he saw the warm blush on the cheeks of the girl. She thought he was the kind soul who had freed her from the toils of Babylon, and her thoughts went out to him, if not in words, in the pressure of the hand, and in the beaming of her eyes of blue. The evening went like a dream to Sid Jones. Olga was a charming girl, and their endeavors to make each other understand, added zest to their love-making —and all this time Horace Lusk was galloping away in down towards Echo the darkness canyon, carrying dispatches to headquarters in Salt Lake City. THE FOLLY OF ASTROLOGY.* BY DR. JOHN A. WIDTSOE, OF THE UTAH STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, LOGAN. Pseudo-science means false science. It is a monster that fills every searcher with dismay. Science is built on truth; it experiments, observes, classifies, and shows the unchanging relation of numerous isolated facts. Pseudo-science is built on error, without experiment or careful observation; it assumes something to be true, and on this imaginary foundation builds a complex system of relations, in which men are asked to believe. Science is careful, plodding, and states all its conclusions with caution; pseudo-science has little thought for accuracy, but lays down far-reaching laws with a positive assurance. Science is modest and unpretentious. Pseudo-science knows no limit to its pretensions; in borrowed garments, enveloped with an air of mysticism, and full of bravado, it stalks about under the stolen title of science. Science is truth; pseudo-science is error. There would be no need to burden the pages of the Era, whose readers regard truth as the end of their existence, with a discussion of one of the pseudo-sciences, were it not that untruth, clad in the pilfered garments of verity, and with the authority of respected men, is insinuating itself into the lives of some Latter-day Saints. Insidious and insinuating doctrines are leading even some of the young men astray, temporarily, from that unyielding faith in the * This article is not intended for a systematic argument against astrology: it sounds only a note of warning, and in so doing, touches lightly on several objections against the art. I doubt very much that it merits greater notice. 290 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Gospel which is our strength and our glory. There are men amongus, holding the Holy Priesthood, who in events of their lives would rather stare into a bit of flint-glass that enterprising dealers name a seer-stone, for the solution of their troubles, than to go with the power and authority of their Priesthood to the Almighty Father in prayer. There are persons among us who, after receiving the ordinances of The Church, will place more confidence in the fortune teller with his deck of cards, than in the promises given them as children by the Priesthood. Others, in the direction of their affairs, will give greater heed to the twaddle of a phrenologist, than to the earnest council of an Apostle of the Lord. And, I grieve to say, there are men holding the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood, whose books on astrology are worn with much use, while their patriarchal blessings, clean and bright, are mislaid with other antiquated documents. True, the number of those who can harmonize such beliefs with their faith in the Gospel is small; and true, too, few of those who have been deceived are long led away. However, to forewara is to forearm; hence, this article has been written for those who may be tempted. In the list of pseudo-sciences stands, hoary-headed with its high antiquity, the folly of astrology. It has a great power to mislead, for it insists on a near relationship with one of the most accurate of the sciences, namely, astronomy. Astronomy studies with exhaustive care, the motions of the planets and other bodies in space; it measures their distances from the earth and from each other; it determines their chemical composition; and predicts the places that they will occupy at some future time. Astrology, on the other hand, accepts the facts as determined by astronomy, and busies itself with predicting events in the individual lines from the positions of the planets. Claudius Ptolemy, who wrote perhaps the best treatise on astrology, held that in human lives, "all accidents, good or bad, general or particular, originate in the motions of the planets and of the luminaries, and may be foretold by taking into consideration the positions and configurations of the planets." That is also the belief of the modern astrologers. Astronomy and astrology are bofch built upon fundamental laws; and the truth or falsity of these sciences will depend upon the reliability of their foundations. The planets have been studied: THE FOLLY OF ASTROLOGY. 291 from the earliest times, and many correct laws for their motions, were discovered early in the history of the world. It is not much more than two hundred years, however, since the fundamental law of astronomy was recognized, that connected in a reasonable manner all previously discovered laws. Sir Isaac Newton, the celebrated mathematician, physicist and astronomer, elaborated after many years of thought and study, the famous law of gravitation. It reads as follows: "Every body attracts every other body with a force which varies directly as the product of their masses, and inversely as the square of the distance by which they are separated." In other words, the earth is attracting every star in the universe, and all the stars are attracting the earth and each other J every man and beast in the world are attracting the earth, and the earth in turn is attracting them. This attraction becomes greater as the attracting bodies become larger; it becomes smaller as the distance between them increases. Now, be it remembered, that this law was not the product of Newton's imagination, he took only the observations of hundreds of men who had gone before him, and by his keener intellect drew out of them this great law. Since Newton's day, hundreds of astronomers have tested the truth of the law of gravitation, and have found it to be invariable. It is therefore held to be an eternal truth. Astrology claims, also, that there is a force by which all things in space are held together. It imagines that a child, at the mo- ment of its birth, is independently attracted by the countless objects in space. The earth attracts the new born child; so does the moon, the planets and all the heavenly bodies. As a result, there arises in the body of the child a peculiar strain, due to these attractions. Now, as the planets move onward in their courses, and approach or recede from the child, the strains to which it is subject change in a corresponding degree. So far, there may be a little truth in the hypothesis; though the counterbalancing attraction of the body, would naturally make any strains imperceptible. Astrology goes still further and assumes that not only does this law hold for material things, but it is also valid for spiritual things. So important is this attraction that the ruling planet, at the time of birth, will govern the new life until its last days; and all events in the lives of men are the results of the influences of the planets. 292 IMPROVEMENT ERA In short, man, with his individuality and free agency, is more perfectly a slave to the measured motions of the stars, than are the lifeless rocks of the mountains or the waters of the rivers. This fundamental law of astrology was not founded on facts, or, if supporting facts existed at the time of its origin, they are not now known. Besides, although astrologers for many centuries have been trying desperately to prove its truth, yet no facts sufficient to establish the fundamen;tal law have been adduced. The fundamental law of astrology is a product of the imagination, and in that respect differs essentially from the law of gravitation which was built upon thousands of observations, made for thousands of years. Guesses are always allowable in science, but, until their truth is established, they should be considered only as guesses; or if they do not stand the tests, they should be discarded immediately. That the lives of men and women are governed by the planets, may or may not be true; certain it is that astrology, by its predictions, has not proved the truth of the assumption. Test cases, in which the moments of birth of men were stated, have been given eminent professors of astrology at various times, but never have they been able to recount the important details of the lives. Any intelligent man, with some world-knowledge and insight into the natures of men, can make shrewd guesses concerning the events that are likely to overtake his friends. The predictions of the best astrologers have never risen above shrewd guesses. Astrologers themselves realize their inability to foretell events with any great accuracy, but rather than to give up their so-called science, they insist that, while the fundamental principle is correct, the true key has been lost to mankind. A lost science is no science, as far as the world is concerned; and thus by their own statements a science of astrology does not now exist. As an evidence, I may quote the following paragraphs written to astrologers by Raphael, who is the most popular astrologer of the century: The most difficult and least understood part of astrology is the directional, or the calculation of future events. There are Zodiacal directions, Mundane directions, secondary directions, progressed cusps, revolutional figures, eclipses, new moons, etc., etc., until, in short, if they were all calculated in detail, there would be at least an important influ- THE FOLLY OF ASTROLOGY. 293 ence every week on the average. The stem facts of life do not bear out such copious influences, and it is practically a waste of time to work out the primaries, as they are called, when not more than ten per cent will be found to coincide with an event. I regret that I must adhere to the opinion so often expressed, which is that none of our systems of directions are correct, but that the secondary.as taught in my key, comes nearer the truth than any, yet it is sadly deficient and unreliable. I do not take the planets as symbols but as forces, producing or causing the events that occur during our pilgrimage on this earth. The true key to astrology was lost centuries ago, and has not yet been found. Our knowledge of the Zodiac is sadly deficient, and it is this deficiency that causes so many failures.* Lines more destructive to astrology could hardly have been written. Any clever deceiver can make ten per cent of his guesses concerning any ordinary subject come true. Other devotees of fortune-telling by stars argue with great vigor that astrology must be true, if for no other reason, because it existed as far back as history goes. This is a shallow argument; for error has always existed, and an error, no matter, how old it is, can never become a truth. It was believed for centuries that iron, lead, and other base metals, could be transmitted into gold; but we know today that the notion is false. Alchemy is nearly six thousand years old, yet is false; chemistry is little over one hundred years old, but is true. Errors, like garden weeds, will live on and flourish when truth and things useful perish. There is another argument for astrology, which has influenced many people in their beliefs, but which fails to regard fundamental principles. Astrologers claim that not only has astrology existed from early times, but great men of all ages have believed in it. History informs us that many men (including some astronomers) who have benefited the world by their labors, have been advocates of astrology. It is noteworthy, however, that their scientific work was sharply separated from their astrological beliefs. The number of men of high learning, who have investigated astrology and have rejected it, is much larger than the number of those who have accepted it. Among those who have studied the subjects, astronomy Next to the last page in Raphael's Ephemeris, for 1901.